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The Nub Team

Nub 0.2.0: Web Workers on stock Node

Nub adds the browser-standard Worker to stock Node — the same constructor and event surface you write for the web, with no Nub-specific API — and hardens package-manager compatibility across pnpm, yarn, and bun.

Nub 0.2.0 ships the browser-standard Worker on your installed Node, and hardens the package manager's compatibility with pnpm, yarn, and bun.

Web Workers

const worker = new Worker(new URL("./worker.ts", import.meta.url), { type: "module" });

worker.postMessage({ n: 41 });
worker.onmessage = (ev) => console.log(ev.data); // → 42
// worker.ts — runs directly, no build step
self.onmessage = (ev) => self.postMessage(ev.data.n + 1);

This is the same new Worker(...) constructor, postMessage, and event surface you write for the web, running on your installed Node. There is no Nub-specific API: it is the WHATWG Web Workers shape (Cloudflare semantics where there is no formal spec), preloaded as a polyfill over node:worker_threads and feature-detected so it installs only when no native global is present. It closes the most-upvoted open issue on the nodejs/node repository without waiting for Node to ship it.

What works:

  • TypeScript and JSX worker entries run directly — Nub transpiles the worker like any other entry, so a .ts worker needs no build step.
  • Inline workers via data: and blob: URLs — the WHATWG inline mechanisms, which node:worker_threads does not expose through a browser-shape constructor.
  • Classic and module workers — type: "module" (the default) and type: "classic", the latter exposing synchronous importScripts(...).
  • Real MessageEvent and ErrorEvent — inbound messages arrive as MessageEvents; a thrown worker error surfaces as an ErrorEvent with populated filename, lineno, and colno.
  • Transferables, MessageChannel / MessagePort, and BroadcastChannel round-trip correctly.

The polyfill is preloaded on Node 18.19 and up. SharedWorker and ServiceWorker are not part of this release. A WPT-based conformance harness guards the surface in CI. (#99, #119)

Package manager

AreaWhat changed
yarnResolve yarn-berry catalogs instead of erroring (#130)
yarnHonor npmMinimalAgeGate; drop a fabricated bun trustedDependencies gate (#131)
pnpmWrite link: versions for versionless workspace members in pnpm-lock.yaml (#115)
pnpmAudit against pnpm 11.9.0 — redact inherited credentials, honor multi-version release-age excludes (#104)
generalFix a packageManager URL-form crash and store-open without a home directory (#116)

Tooling and distribution

  • Official Nub Docker images — node:26 slim and alpine — with a publish workflow. (#108)
  • Homebrew tap formula auto-bumps on release, with a Node-free brew test. (#121, #125)

Thanks to @jdalton for the dependency trim, build split, and test coverage, and to @morinokami, @iamnafets, @innermatrix-cityblock, and @devharshthakur for the issue reports that drove the package-manager and install-path fixes.

The full release notes list every change in this release.